


this evening hand in hand

by 8611



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Twins, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Dark, F/M, Genetic Engineering, M/M, Torture, Twincest, super shady government shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-05
Updated: 2013-01-05
Packaged: 2017-11-23 18:58:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/625506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/8611/pseuds/8611
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This isn't walking into a doctor’s office and picking out your baby, it’s reaching into a cell and twisting its heart between your fingers. Bond’s unnatural eyes don’t come close to Twin mods.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this evening hand in hand

**Author's Note:**

> Q’s name is Mane (Mah-nay) here, to go with Vesper. There’s an explanation as to why in the fic itself. 
> 
> At one point I skate pretty close to the plot of _Casino Royale_ , so things get a little vague, because we know what happens with Bond and Vesper in those scenes, they’re unchanged (the shower scene being the big one), and I didn’t want to just rewrite them. The torture and death are CR canon. The twincest is super minor. Also, there's angst all over the place. 
> 
> I mention in here that Q and Vesper are four – physically and mentally they’re late 20’s/early 30’s, but they were produced four years prior to the story. Anyone seen the Michael Bay film _The Island_? They’re produced like the clones are in that movie. 
> 
> The title is from the Neruda poem “Clenched Soul”.

Bond’s never been a fan of Twins. Sure, he’s got his mods like anyone else, but the Twins are something else, something that’s been pushed and tweaked just a bit too much. This isn’t walking into a doctor’s office and picking out your baby, it’s reaching into a cell and twisting its heart between your fingers. Bond’s unnatural eyes don’t come close to Twin mods. 

Still, they have their usefulness. They hear everything, see all, eyes and ears in any situation where someone’s gotten too stupid on sex or alcohol to not run their mouth. He’s been working with the same set most of his tenure as a field agent, but evidently his new status means higher clearance. The new ones are cleared for the 00 pool and are evidently the kind of sharp, deadly pair that come from government intervention. These two could probably be agents as much as any other mod, dragged out of a batch that should have been lacking in viability due to too many mods, but instead it spit out the two pale, dark haired individuals.

They’re standing in the door to the hotel room, and one of them is male (that’s new), usually Twins are truly genetically identical. Still, they’re close – the same height, same wavy hair, pale skin and unnaturally light green eyes. 

“007,” the woman greets, a smile hovering on her lips. Her brother stays slightly behind her, blinks sharp eyes that are ringed in the same dark powder his sister is sporting. They’re dressed similarly too, tight black garments that don’t reveal much skin but leave little to the imagination. 

“Vesper and Mane?” He asks, nodding at them (and god, they’re young, these two, although the woman looks harder, like she’s seen more, and maybe she has). Vesper opens the door wider, lets him slip through. The room is minimal and dripping in wealth, matching the rest of the hotel, and he’s not surprised when Vesper and Mane are on him the minute the door is shut, Vesper with an arm on his shoulder and Mane pressing a palm into the small of his back. They’re tactile, it’s their job, even though Bond’s never used Twins for that particular purpose. For him, they’re information and nothing else. 

“What can we do for you?” Vesper asks, reaches up to brush at his hair with long fingers. 

“I need some information about a minister in the defense bureau.” 

“You know that will cost you,” Vesper responds. 

“What do you two want?” Bond finds it more interesting to deal in things, rather than money.

“I need the schematics for the new mainframe the MP are running,” Mane says, and his voice is quiet but the sentence seems strange to Bond’s ears, and it take him a moment to realize that it’s because the world _I_ had entered into it. He’s never heard a Twin refer to themselves as a single entity before. 

“That’ll take some work,” Bond says. 

“I know you can do it,” Vesper says, and there’s that word again. “And Mane can get you your information.”

Singular, all over their speech. These two are different, and it’s intriguing. 

\---

The Twins prove to be highly useful, and by a month into knowing them Bond is very aware that their swath of clients are even more high up than the usual, the way they know state secrets and follow intrigue. They may as well be sitting at Number 10 listening in on meetings, for all the information they get their hands on. 

Bond sees them once at gala at the V&A, gliding across the courtyard on the arms of some MP who Bond doesn’t know off the top of his head. The fountain is lit up, and it makes their skin glow, and he knows that at least Vesper spots him, when her eyes swivel in his direction and she nods. 

His own date is the kind of society wife who doesn’t care if she’s seen with another man in a very public place, and doesn’t know that Bond is using her to get at her husband. If she did know, she probably wouldn’t care, though. She speaks of her husband with the kind of disdain that suggests she’s just waiting for him to drop dead so that she can get on with husband number three (four?). 

“They’re so strange,” Celia says, pursing her lips. “My husband likes their type, I’ve never understood why.”

“Who, the Twins?” Bond’s actually noticed three other pairs at this party besides Vesper and Mane, and they’re all shorter and quieter, a little more human, clearly older productions. He hasn’t asked, but he’s willing to put Vesper and Mane at three or four, from one of the more recent batches. They’ve been playing with them more and more every batch, and he can guess that under all the black layers Mane and Vesper are too thin, limbs too long, skin too delicate. He’d call it odd, but then again, he’s seen two mods at this party with strange colored hair that they were clearly not born with, and his own eyes fall into that category as well. Easy, simple things, when everything was just getting started 30, 40 years ago. 

“I know they’re good for… certain aspects of life, but still, sleeping with them?” 

“Some people enjoy it.”

“I’m more of a fan of the older mods.” 

She runs fingers up his arm, smiles a bit too wide, and Bond breathes in through his nose, decides he’s had enough of the party. 

“How would you like to head home?” He asks, and she laughs when he tosses his wine glass over their heads into the fountain, bobbling on the surface and spreading red through the water. 

Vesper finds him at the coat check, while he’s waiting for Celia, and tucks something into his pocket. 

“Mrs. Martin’s husband was killed three hours ago,” she whispers, her lips close to his ear. “I wouldn’t head home, just yet.”

“I would,” Bond replies, and Vesper backs off of him, raising an eyebrow.

“Foolish.”

“Just how I do things.”

Her red smirk reminds him of the wine in the fountain, and when he and Celia open the door to her townhouse, the very men Bond has been trying to track down are there waiting for them, in the stupidly posh drawing room. Celia ends up on the stairs, curling in on herself at the sight of blood and brain, and Bond calls in a body cleanup from the agency.

That’s what Bond is good for – brunt force and firepower. The Twins can slip and skulk their way through life, but sometimes you have to head straight up the middle of a situation.

\---

The paper was a print out with two words written on it – _Le Chiffre_. 

Two weeks later M hands him a folder with operational briefs, and, interestingly, two plane tickets. One has his usual cover, the other says Vesper Lynd. 

“I don’t know if bringing a Twin with me is the best idea,” Bond says. “Especially a solitary twin.”

“You know as well as I do that those two operate away from each other perfectly well,” M says, already back to working through paperwork, fingers flying across the holo surface of her desk. 

“I think you know more about these Twins that you’re telling me,” Bond says, and of course she does, she’s M. She barely offers up half of the information pertinent to any given situation. 

“Nonsense,” M says. “Your flight is in four hours, I’d head out.”

He stops by the usual hotel room, and finds Vesper putting in a pair of earrings. There’s a packed bag by the door, and no sign of Mane. 

“Baby brother not accompanying us?” Bond asks. 

“You know we’re exactly the same age,” Vesper says. “He’s in New York with a UN delegate.” 

“You two are interesting,” Bond says, and he is actually extremely curious about them at this point. 

“So are you,” Vesper says as she picks up her bag, casts one last glance around the room. She doesn’t let Bond carry her bag, and presses the button for the lift with one long finger, her nails a deep copper color. “00 agent, and not a single fitness or endurance mod. Although I suppose you’re too old for the accelerated healing.” 

“Six years after I was born,” Bond says as the door dings open, the lobby a flurry of activity around them. “All my parents wanted were the defaults.”

“And the eyes,” Vesper says. “If those are natural, I’m the Queen.”

“You’re not the Queen,” Bond says. There’s a car waiting for them, and Vesper lounges in the backseat with the self-assured nature of someone who knows that they belong because they make it so. 

“Why did you agree to come with me?” Bond asks.

“No one shows up in Monte Carlo without a beautiful woman on their arm, not when they’re so easy to find these days,” Vesper says. “You’d stick out like a sore thumb. You’re lucky the UN delegate likes boys better, or you’d be stuck with Mane, and he’d be no good for this. Too traditional of a setting.” 

“Do you even like Mane?” Bond asks, smirking. 

“I love him,” Vesper says, tosses it off like she’d commented on Bond’s tie. “Do well to remember that.”

“I won’t forget it,” Bond says, and Vesper turns to him, stares at him with a slight tilt to her head. 

“Why the eyes?” She asks finally.

“My parents never told me,” Bond says, gives a small shrug with one shoulder. “Turned out a bit shit though, it’s not good to be memorable in this field.”

“No,” Vesper says, “it’s not.”

\---

It’s not as if it’s a surprise that Vesper is gorgeous, but when she shows up on the casino floor she draws everyone’s eye. Bond isn’t immune, he’d have to be dead to not watch her. For one thing, she has that self-assured smile that commands attention, and for another, Bond is fairly sure that her gown could not be any tighter or more low cut. She’s wearing a necklace with a knot of some kind on the chain, and it trails down her chest. 

Bond excuses himself to go join her at the bar, where she’s taken the stool next to Mathis. 

“This is new,” Bond murmurs, pressing a finger into the middle of the knot. She takes his hand, raises an eyebrow, and drops the hand on the bar like an offending piece of fuzz. He smiles at her. 

“Mane found it for me on an assignment,” Vesper says, gives a small shrug. “I wear it under my usual clothes.”

“Which, by the way, do not do you any justice.” Bond files away the fact that Vesper had used the word _assignment_. 

“Yes, well, if the world spent all day staring at my breasts we wouldn’t get anything done, would we?”

Mathis chuckles from behind her, and her smile takes on a dangerous edge. Bond find that he kind of wants to kiss it away, and the thought startles him – he realizes that he’s thinking of Vesper as just Vesper, not a Twin. 

“It’d be an excellent existence,” Bond says. 

“Forgive me if I don’t agree with you,” Vesper says. “It worked though, I think everyone’s jaw came a bit unhinged.”

“You cut quite a figure. Drink?”

“You need to be sober for this.”

“If you think I won’t be sober after one drink you don’t know much about me.”

“I know enough,” she says as a bartender comes over, set two drinks down between them, a Negroni in front of Vesper and a martini for Bond. “Don’t fuck it up, Bond.”

“I’ll try not to,” Bond says, takes a sip of the martini, makes an appreciative noise. “You do know me, seemingly.”

Vesper’s smile would be at home on a venomous snake, and her eyes are trained on his own, his face, the set of his shoulder, for the whole game, and Bond wonders how long it’s been since someone has distracted him to this degree. 

\---

Bond supposes this is a first, being tortured by a man who cries blood. He could do without, honestly, especially since he’s not fully sure how to get out of this one. Being tied to a chair naked with no easy escape isn’t exactly how he wanted to spend his evening, especially since he’s also been shot at and wrecked the Aston tonight. 

And Vesper. He’s lost her, not sure where they’ve taken her. That’s the worst part of all of this. Bond could care less what they do to him, but he doesn’t want them laying a hand on Vesper. Twins may be able to talk their way out of almost any situation, but when push comes to shove they tend to break easily under physical punishment. They’re not made to withstand that kind of thing, they’re not soldiers, or agents. 

His head is fuzzy, he’s assuming he did a number on it in the accident, and every swing of Le Chiffre’s rope leaves him raw and straining and in agony ( _laugh, laugh it off_ , his brain is telling him from somewhere) and his whole body is flashing red, screaming, breaking. 

He has to get to Vesper. She’s been through enough, she shouldn’t have even come, he told M –

Another swing, another broken, guttural noise, body splitting, blood and skin and he can’t feel his fingers, his feet –

The chair goes sideways, there’s cool ground under his side, and he gasps when the rope comes down on his shoulder this time, and again, hip, side, he’s sure the wet he feels is blood from split skin. 

And then, just like that, there are gunshots and another body on the floor that isn’t his own, and in that white-red-black haze, someone is peering down at him, and there are rough voices that he can’t place, can’t hear, can’t understand. A gun is being raised, and –

_I wouldn’t do that, if I were you._

There is a voice from the ceiling, the walls. The sprinkler system is suddenly on, the door at the far end of the room opening of its own accord, and there are more people now, more gunshots, and more bodies, and he wonders who’s in this building, in its veins and neurons, skipping across wood and steel. 

Then for a while, he doesn’t wonder about anything.

\---

Vesper brings him a blanket, limping slightly across the lawn on a twisted ankle that she refuses to put up. 

“I _do_ have accelerated healing,” Vesper says, brushes it off as she spreads the blanket across his lap and perches on the arm of his chair. The sunlight is bright in her hair, on the surface of the lake, and he reaches up to tangle a strand of her hair on his finger. She has the same wavy hair as Mane, not straight or curly, but caught somewhere in the middle. Something jogs in his mind at the thought of Mane, and he frowns, stares out at the lake and the hills. 

“I thought I heard a voice, Mane’s, when I was in the warehouse,” Bond says. “I know it sounds incredibly stupid.”

“Not really,” Vesper says, takes his hand away from her hair but doesn’t drop it, twines his fingers with hers. “It _was_ Mane. He always finds a way to get into places he shouldn’t, he got a hold of the building’s PA system.” 

“He was on site?”

Vesper laughs at that, pushes her hair behind her ears with her free hand. 

“Mane can be anywhere as long as he has a computer,” Vesper says finally. “He was always that way, from day one – as soon as we had the muscle control for writing, he was typing. Some of us are produced with little knowledge quirks, Mane got a bit of a large one.”

“And you?”

“It doesn’t matter. He’ll be here next week, by the way.”

“He doesn’t have to come.”

“We haven’t seen each other over two weeks. That’s a long time for us.”

Bond can’t imagine what it’s like to be missing half of you, and he untangles their hands to cup Vesper’s cheek instead, and she leans into it, sighs when he runs his knuckles across her jaw. 

“You should get some sleep,” Vesper says. “I’ll get a nurse.”

He watches her limp back across the law, back straight, and doesn’t care what’s happened to his own body, because Vesper is alive and healing. She isn’t limping in a few more days, and Bond kisses her, and she doesn’t pull away.

She breathes out, sighs against his lips, and runs her hands across his shoulder as she straddles him. Bond is glad for the loose top she’s wearing, so that his hands can sit over her lower back, track upwards, and when he unhooks her bra she stops, pulls back for a heartbeat. 

“I think that would count as vigorous activity,” she murmurs, and then pulls at his bottom lip with her teeth. 

“I’ve made a career out of disobeying orders,” Bond says, and she laughs at that, lets him roll them over, and he’s slow, and aching, but Vesper arches under him and the words that fall from her lips, whispered into his ear, are scattered by breathy moans. 

\---

“I’m surprised you haven’t asked yet.”

They’re on the lawn, sitting against one of the trees, Vesper between his spread legs. She turns, just a small amount, so that she can press a kiss into the inside of his arm where it’s draped over her shoulder. 

“Asked what?” Bond asks, voice low, eyes closed. 

“Why I’m doing this.”

“You’re either playing along, or you do have feelings for me. I know it’s beyond naïve, but I’m choosing to believe the later.” 

Her laugh reminds him of the summer storms in Hong Kong, when he’d been there for three months as a field agent. 

“You’re not naïve.”

“Unless I choose to be.”

She turns fully, so that she can kiss him on the lips, and he opens his eyes as she pulls back, kneeling in the clipped grass. 

“I was afraid you were trying to seduce me away from everything,” Vesper says. “Like those old movies – the hooker with a heart of gold, just waiting to be swept off her feet.”

“Escort sounds better,” Bond says, one side of his mouth quirking up, and she laughs, kissing him again. 

“They call us partners, when they train us.”

“I’m alright with that. Are you still worried?”

“No,” Vesper says, and she’s close enough that he can feel her breath on his lips. “I don’t think you know how to lie to me.”

“I don’t,” Bond says, and he stands up, pulls Vesper up by one hand. “I care too much about you.”

“A crack in your armor,” Vesper says. 

“A welcome one,” Bond says, and then swings her up into his arms, making her laugh and lock her hands around his neck. 

“Bond – are you out of your mind?” She’s trying to chastise him, he knows, but she’s laughing too hard. “Put me down!”

“I’m making up for the twisted ankle,” he says over her laughter as he walks them back inside, the darkness of the room cool against their sunkissed skin. 

“That’s unnecessary, you’re still healing,” she says. She smiles as he dumps her on the bed, climbs over her, and it’s impossible not to notice when, between broken off and breathy kisses, lips and tongue, she whispers something that almost get swallowed but sounds a lot like _I love you_. If he shudders back an answer, she doesn’t comment on it, just arches up under him, skin on skin. 

In the quiet afterwards, when he’s drawing lazy circles around the knot of her necklace (fallen into the hollow of her collarbones) with one finger, Bond wonders if it’s possible to just stay here forever, leave it all, tell M that he’s gone and found a life, a real one. He could so easily build a life around this one person, Vesper fits under his hands and into his mind like she was always meant to be there. 

She cards her fingers through his hair, and he pushes himself up onto one elbow, looks down at her. 

“Come to Venice with me,” he says, and it’s a sudden thought, leaping off a cliff. 

“I think a few people would be very unhappy with us if we just disappeared.” 

“Bring Mane.”

“No, our employers,” Vesper says, smiles. “Mane would always find us.” 

“Our employers can be dealt with,” Bond says. She looks up at him for a long time, and her hand drops from his scalp to his jaw, and he leans into her long fingers. 

“Venice,” she says, and he nods. She kisses a _yes_ into his lips. 

The next day Mane is there, stripped of make-up and heels but still wearing all black. He takes walks with Vesper across the lawn in bare feet, and Bond watches them from a bench, and wonders what they talk about when no one can hear them, out here on the lake where no one cares to listen in. None of them are exactly used to being able to be totally private people, to speak with the knowledge that no one is listening to you except the person who the words are intended for. 

\---

The sheets are tangled around their legs, and Vesper trails her fingers across Bond’s bare chest, up and down his sternum, again and again. He sighs, quietly, turns his head to press a kiss into her hair, and she smiles, looking up at him. She looks younger without the heavy rings of make-up around her eyes, her face brought down to bare skin. Without everything Bond can see that she has a tiny scattering of freckles across the top of her nose, probably brought out by the sun. 

Mane shifts on Bond’s other side, still asleep, and Vesper hauls herself up, the sheets slipping across bare skin. She runs her hands through her hair, pulls it back away from her face. 

“I have to run a few quick errands, I should get going,” she murmurs, and Bond pulls her down to kiss her. She kisses him like she’s drowning, hungry and broken, and when she pulls back Bond watches her face, but there’s nothing there but a serene smile.

“You’re alright?” He asks, and she nods, pushes her hair back again with one hand. 

“Fine, always,” she says, smiles, and he watches her move about, picking up her dress from last night where it’s been thrown over the back of a chair, running a brush through her hair. She stands with her back to Bond, in front of a window, and the light halos around her. 

When she’s dressed she comes back, kisses him again, and it’s that same shattered something behind her lips, like she’s trying to say something without words. When they break apart their foreheads rest together, and one of Bond’s hands finds its way to the back of her neck.

“Vesper,” he says, and she laughs, a quiet noise in the large room, and when she pulls back she’s smiling. 

“Still fine,” she promises him, kisses him on the forehead. She leans over him, wakes Mane with a kiss to his jaw, and he mumbles and turns onto his back, languid and cat-like. 

“Where are you going?” Mane asks, blinking up at her, and she gives him a last quick kiss before standing up, and his eyes follow her. 

“Out, I’ll be right back,” she says, and then she’s gone, leaving Mane and Bond in a too large bed in a too large hotel room. Mane twists his shoulders one way, his hips the other, and Bond raises an eyebrow at the series of cracks he gets out of his spine. 

“Something’s not right with her,” Mane says after he settles, looking up at Bond with unguarded eyes. 

“She wouldn’t tell me anything.”

“No,” Mane sighs, sits up. “She never does.” 

Bond scoots back against the headboard and Mane leans against him, lets Bond tangle fingers in the waves of his hair. He’d expected Mane to come as a package deal with Vesper, but he hadn’t expected him to fit in so unobtrusively, simple and quiet and there for Bond when Vesper isn’t. It’s strange, but not unpleasant. 

Someone’s mobile is ringing, and Bond frowns. 

“Yours?” He asks, and Mane is suddenly sitting upright, looking across the room in the direction of the ringing.

“Vesper’s,” Mane says, and his voice is quiet and hard, “she never leaves without it. I’ve seen her answer the thing in the middle of the opera.”

Bond is out of bed in a second, and he catches the mobile on its last ring. 

“Hello?” 

“Ah, is Miss Lynd there?” The voice on the other end of the line triggers a memory – it’s the banker, from the card game. 

“No, this is Bond, is there a problem?”

“There seems to be a sudden transfer of your funds, is this alright?”

Bond looks back at Mane, where he’s sitting up in bed, hair a mess and skin pale, and there’s unease on his face. 

“No, that’s not alright. Where is the transfer coming from?”

“Our central bank in Venice, sir.”

“Cancel the transfer, return the funds to the original treasury account right now.”

“Mr. Bond, I’m not sure if-“

“Now,” Bond says, and he starts pulling on clothes, grabs a gun from his bag, and he tosses the mobile to Mane. 

“What’s going on?” Mane asks, tumbling out of the tangle of sheets. 

“I’m not sure, stay here,” Bond says, but of course Mane leaves with him, and Bond can tell from the worry in every line of Mane’s normally blank face that something’s wrong, but he also doesn’t know what’s wrong. Bond leads, Mane brining up the rear on those long legs of his. Bond is the one to spot her crossing a bridge with two men, and the way they box her in means that she’s probably being lead somewhere. 

“What’s-“ Mane starts, but Bond shakes his head, and Mane falls silent. Bond pulls his gun, starts moving after them, and at the top of the arc of the bridge Vesper looks back, sees him, and for a moment she looks shocked, and then, a calmness falls across her features. She smiles at him, something almost sad, and then she runs. She hefts her body up on the brick railing of the bridge and somewhere behind him he can hear screaming – _Vesper, no, no what are you doing, Vesper!_ – and then she tosses herself over the edge, the men scrabbling for her but missing. Bond watches, as if in slow motion, as she throws her body just right so that she catches her chin on the brick, snaps her head back, and she falls lifeless towards the water. 

Bond’s over the edge and in the water before he has time to think. The surface breaks for him, and the canal is blue-green, the sunlight filtering through the water unnaturally. Vesper is a black swirl in the water, the layers of her dress and her hair spread out around her like petals, and his hands are on skin that’s already cooling, his fingers scrabbling over her skin, to her neck, over and over again and he can’t find a pulse.

\---

He wakes up in a white room with a pale floor and in a bed with black sheets. There’s the soft sound of wind somewhere, and when he turns slightly he sees a low shelf at one end of the room, books and decorative little things adorning it. The only chair in the room is empty, although there’s a blanket tossed across it like someone was there at some point. 

There’s sunlight spilling in through the window, and he sits up slowly, his head swimming. 

He’s getting out of bed when the memory slams into him, a perfect picture of Vesper looking too pale, hair like smoke in the cold water, and he sits back down heavily, staring at the wall. He’s not sure how long he sits there, concentrating on nothing besides dragging air in and out of his lungs, before there’s a knock at the door. When he turns there’s Mane, looking absurd in a simple white shirt and worn jeans. There are two mugs in his hands, and he stands in the door, looking stripped down without any make-up or emotion on his face. He doesn’t even look like Mane, not quite. 

“Is that tea or coffee?” Bond asks, and his voice sounds too rough to his own ears. 

“Tea,” Mane replies quietly, licks his lips and then finally walks over, sitting down very carefully next to Bond, a good foot of space left between them. When he holds out the mug his fingers don’t touch Bond’s and this new creature sitting next to him is wrong, doesn’t sit well with Bond. He’s not sure he’s ever been in a room with Mane without him touching him in some way or another. 

They don’t speak for a long time, and then Mane suddenly draws in a shuddering breath, and this time Bond is the one to reach out and touch him, and Mane turns at the palm wrapped around the back of his neck.

“I should go,” Mane says, and Bond shakes his head, pulls him in, and the mugs end up on the floor so that they can lie down, Mane tucked into Bond’s arms, his head on Bond’s chest. Bond doesn’t miss the way Mane presses his hand directly over Bond’s heart. 

Bond rubs circles into Mane’s back and stares at the ceiling and thinks of water, over and over again, and the way Vesper’s hair had looked caught up in it all. 

\---

It turns out that the room is in a farmhouse in the West Country (it reeks of _recovery_ and _paid leave_ ), and when he wakes up early the next morning Mane is down in the kitchen, sitting on the floor with his back to the oven, arms around his knees. Bond helps him up, sits him down on the sofa in the next room over, and goes to get a blanket to wrap around him. 

“It’s just me now,” Mane says, when Bond sits down next to him. “When we were all together, all five sets from the Q batch, the other four sets were all permanently culled, because of aging issues. Telomeres too short, or some such. I saw one of the girls from the first set just keel over in the hallway, one day. Heart attack. She didn’t look any older than me. So it was just Vesper and I that made it out, somehow. Or maybe just me, she never told me the results of her tests, and they guessed my genome was already tweaked out of their grip when I turned up male.” 

The words tumble out in even, quiet cadence, this small bit of Mane’s world, woven here in the farmhouse. 

“You two were lucky,” Bond says, and Mane shakes his head. 

“The way we do genetics these days, there’s no luck, things are just correct or wrong. You’re either alive or you’re dead.”

“Not everyone has mods like that.”

“No,” and Mane’s lips turn up in some parody of a grin. “The _lucky_ ones don’t.” 

“If you need-“

“You loved her,” Mane cuts him off, turns to him. “I should be asking you if you need anything.”

“So did you.”

They’re quiet for a long stretch of time, not touching again, and Bond feels the need to do something with his hands, anything. Instead he asks a question he’s been meaning to ask for too long. 

“What’s the opposite with you two?” 

“Our names?” A nod from Bond. “Morning and Evening. Latin.” 

“And Vesper was the evening,” Bond guesses. “Which makes you Morning.”

Mane just nods before getting up, moving without his usual slink, something more awkward and bird-like, and he gets to the doorway to the kitchen before stopping, turning back to Bond. 

“I can’t cook, I’m sorry,” he says. “I’ll order something though.”

Bond stares at the empty doorway for a long time, and his hands shake. 

\---

Bond had figured out weeks ago that Mane dislikes sitting in chairs, at tables, and so they’re spread out across the bed instead, a tray of takeaway between them. Mane uses chopsticks like he grew up using them, and Bond wonders what they got up to in these hallways Mane had mentioned earlier. Probably how to be the perfect arm candy, gorgeous and elegant and just a bit too intelligent, although Vesper and Mane are (had been) too clever by half on top of that. 

“You’re on SIS’s payroll, aren’t you?” Bond asks, just as Mane is snapping a fortune cookie neatly in half. He frowns at the little slip of paper, tosses it back down on the tray. 

“That took you an interestingly long time to figure out,” Mane says, looking up at him as he starts breaking off tiny pieces of cookie. 

“The organization that funded your batch, SIS as well?”

“Cabinet Office in general. They were sick of Twins going off grid with state secrets, or vanishing off world all together. Loyalty to the Crown isn’t genetic though, although I swear they tried.”

“And that’s why your batch wasn’t viable – you have mods on top of the normal Twin mods.”

“We’re supposed to have accelerated intelligence, arrested aging and higher levels of dexterity and flexibility. We were also trained differently; free will away from your twin was rewarded. We were taught to be individuals, not pairs. That was how they tried to transfer loyalty. I’d assume the aging is what fucked up the whole batch rather royally. The individual part obviously worked a bit too well.”

“Did the mods work?”

“I don’t think I’ve aged, but it’s only been four years. It’s too early to tell. You’re aware of the other mods.”

Bond turns to stare out the window. It’s grey today, a light rain has been drumming against the windows since this morning. The quiet warmth of the house feels sterile, almost fake. 

“How long have you hands been shaking?”

Bond turns back to Mane, and he’s greeted with hard eyes, the pale green strange in the low blue light. With lamps on they’re almost gold, but now they’re something strange, not quite right. 

“Since Vesper.”

Mane doesn’t say anything in reply, just picks up the slip of paper again and wraps it around his pinky, unwraps it, over and over again. He lets out a long breath, shuddering, and for a moment Bond thinks about gathering him up in his arms again, but Mane digs his hands into his knees and stays silent. 

“What do we do from here?” Bond asks, quiet.

“Things go back to normal,” Mane says. “Or, a new normal. Your M has called me in to work on premise.”

“Can you do that?”

“You mean, do I have the skill to? Yes. I probably know more than a whole handful of those little digitally upgraded techheads that the unis pump out like they’re our saving grace. They’re idiots, can’t think for themselves.”

“Interesting, coming from a Twin.”

“We’ve already established that Vesper and I were clearly not operating on the same wavelength and were our own individuals.”

“So we go back to normal.”

Mane starts gathering up lunch, and he stands up, the tray in steady hands that don’t shake like Bond’s do. 

“We go back to work. Go about life. You tangle your hands in my hair and call me Vesper when you come. Things will be fine.”

Bond’s blindsided by the simple way Mane says it, the calm tone he uses, and Bond reaches out to wrap a hand around his wrist, but he’s already halfway across the room. 

“Mane-“

“Call me Q,” Mane says, looks over his shoulder at Bond. “Last one standing. And I can’t be Mane without Vesper, can I?” 

The door shuts quietly behind him, and Bond stares out the window, tucks his hands under his arms, across his chest, and fights the need to close his eyes because he knows he’ll just see her face, like he always does, and now Mane’s too, dark hair and light eyes, so close to Vesper’s own. 

\---

“Well, I suppose that little experiment went rather pear-shaped,” M says when Bond sits down in her office. 

“They’re not experiments,” Bond says, looks past her, out the wall of windows. 

“This was,” M says. “We wanted to see if Twins could be used as field agents or at least analysts, and if they could operate alone.”

“Why not just use normals then?”

“You know no one is a normal anymore.”

It’s sunny for once, the promise of summer hovering on the horizon. It’s not here yet, but it will be in the next few weeks, warmth creeping into the old bones of an old city. 

“Did Mane have _any_ idea what Vesper was doing?” Bond asks.

“No, not from what we’ve been able to gather. He wasn’t even aware that his life was a bargaining chip in this whole thing. As long as Vesper played along, Mane got to stay alive. I assume she removed herself from the equation after the money was lost to save Mane.”

“And so now you have eight dead Twins, and one broken pair.”

“Nine. And Mane has proven to be useful with computers.”

Bond finally looks at M, and she’s staring at him, age showing around her eyes. M’s only had retroactive mods, he knows, she’s too old to have been born with any, and they’re not holding on as tightly as they used to. 

“Anything else?” Bond asks, and M shakes her head. He’s got his hand on the door when she finally speaks. 

“Bond,” M says, and he stalls in space, fingers pressed into the glass of her door. “I’m sorry.”

The world looks blue again, and Bond’s not sure how long he walks the halls, burning up energy with nowhere to go. 

He ends up outside the room in the basement filled with screens and computers, something he’s heard people call Mission Control, and when Mane turns around, far away through the sliding glass doors, he’s wearing glasses. Bond figures they’re probably to distract people from his unnatural eyes, ask less questions, even though there will always be questions. 

Mane – Q – nods at him, and Bond puts his hands in his pockets, and decides to go home. He knows he won’t sleep, isn’t hungry, but he’s got nothing to do besides sit on his sofa and try not to think.

When his mobile beeps from its spot on his side table later that night, he rolls over to find a text from Q, forwarded from Vesper’s mobile. 

_Mr. White._

\---

Q is standing in the rain, in all black as always, even the umbrella above his head is dark, and Bond spots him immediately as he gets out of the cab, illuminated by storefronts and the fairy lights strung in the bare trees. He’s wearing glasses again, although Bond can still see his eyes in this half-dark, late afternoon light. 

People are watching him as he nonchalantly taps away on his mobile, and Bond’s not surprised. Q will always look like a Twin, with too pale skin and unnaturally red lips, and the fact that he’s alone is startling to these people who swirl around like nervous birds, who have only seen Twins at charity balls and in hotel rooms, like they’re something to be kept locked up and away, only for a select few. 

Bond offers Q his arm, which he takes, moving the umbrella so that it covers both of them. He’s of height with him today, and Bond sneaks a glance down to see that he’s wearing wedge boots, something similar to a pair he’d seen on Vesper once, a lifetime ago. 

Sometimes Q will do this, look a little too close to Vesper, and Bond doesn’t know whose benefit it’s for anymore. 

“Do you want to go back out to the house in Somerset for Christmas?” Q asks, neutral. Anyone can use the house, it’s agency property, although Bond has a feeling that if he asked M would be more than willing to make accommodations. 

“It’s up to you,” Bond says, because he doesn’t care if they stay in London or go halfway around the world, location isn’t important. 

“I already asked M,” Q says, and he licks his lips, turns a bit towards Bond, and there’s jade in his eyes behind his glasses, a hardness to his mouth, and for a moment all Bond sees is Vesper. He kisses Q without thinking, and Q’s lips are warm under his. 

“Alright,” Bond says when he pulls back, nods, and thinks of black sheets and white walls and two people who have slid into one, in the only available space left, and Q’s heels make clipped, wet sounds on the pavement.


End file.
